Prince of Twilight (2 page)

Present day

“M
elina Roscova,” the slender blond woman said, extending a hand. “You must be Maxine Stuart?”

“It's Maxine Malone, and no, I'm not her.” Stormy took the woman's hand. It was cool and her grip very strong. “Stormy Jones,” she said. “Max and Lou are busy with another case, and we didn't think it would take all three of us to conduct the initial interview.”

“I see.” Melina released her grip and dug in her pocket for a business card. “I guess this must be out of date.”

Stormy took the card, looked it over. The SIS logo superimposed itself over the words Supernatural Investigations Services. In smaller letters were
their names, Maxine Stuart, Lou Malone, Tempest Jones and beneath that, in a fancy script, Experienced, professional, discreet and a toll-free number.

She handed the card back. “Yeah, that's pretty old. Maxie and Lou got hitched sixteen years ago now. Of course, we didn't get new cards made up until we'd used all the old ones. You have to be practical, you know.”

“Naturally.”

“So why all the mystery?” Stormy asked. “And why did you want to meet here?”

As she spoke, they moved through the entrance and into the vaulted corridors of the Canadian National Museum. Their steps echoed as they walked. Melina paid the entry fee in cash, and led the way deeper into the building.

“No mystery. I want you to handle a sensitive case for me. Discretion—” she tapped the old business card against her knuckle “—is imperative.”

“You can trust us on that,” Stormy said. “We wouldn't still be in business after all this time if we didn't know how to keep our mouths shut.” She looked at a threadbare tapestry on display inside a glass case. Its colors had faded to gray, and it looked as if a stiff breeze would reduce it to a pile of lint. “So why this place?”

“This is where it is,” Melina said, eyeing several tarnished silver pieces in another case. Bowls, urns, pendants.

“Where what is?”

“What you need to see. But it won't be here for long. It's part of a traveling exhibit. Artifacts uncovered on a recent archaeological dig in the northern part of Turkey.”

Stormy eyed her, waiting for her to say more, but Melina fell silent and moved farther along the hall, among line drawings and diagrams of dig sites, framed like pieces of art. Then she turned to go through two open doors into a large room. There were items lining the walls, all of them safely behind glass barriers. Brass trinkets, steel blades with elaborately carved handles of bone and ivory. Stormy glanced at the items on display, then rubbed her arms, suddenly cold to the bone. “You'd think they'd turn on the heat in here. It's freezing,” she muttered. Then, to distract herself from the rush of discomfort, she snatched up a flyer from a stack in a nearby rack and read from it. According to it, the items found didn't match the culture of the area in which they'd been located, and many were thought to be the spoils of war, brought home by soldiers who looted them
from faraway lands and conquered enemies. The dig site was believed to have been a monastery of sorts—a place where men went to study magic and the occult.

“Here it is,” Melina said.

Stormy dragged her gaze from the flyer to where the other woman stood a few yards away, in front of a small glass cube that sat atop a pedestal. Inside the cube, resting on a clear acrylic base, was a ring. It was big, its wide band more elaborately engraved than the gaudiest high school class ring she'd ever seen. Its gleaming red stone was as big as one of those, too, only she was pretty sure this stone was real.

“It's a ruby,” Melina said, confirming Stormy's unspoken suspicion. “It's priceless. Isn't it incredible?”

Stormy didn't reply. She couldn't take her eyes off the ring. For a moment it was as if she were seeing it through a long, dark tunnel. Everything around her went black, her vision riveted to the ring, her eyes unable to see anything else. And then she heard a voice.

“Inelul else al meu!”

The voice—it came from her own throat. Her lips were moving, but she wasn't moving them. The sensation was as if she had become a puppet, or a dummy in some ventriloquist act. Her body was
moving all on its own, her hands reaching for the glass case, palms pressing to either side of it, lifting it from its base.

A hand closed hard on her arm and jerked her away. “Ms. Jones, what the hell are you doing?”

Stormy blinked rapidly as her body snapped back on line. She saw Melina holding her upper arm while looking around the room as if waiting for the Canadian version of a SWAT team to swarm in.

Stormy cleared her throat. “Did I set off any alarms?”

“I don't think so,” Melina said. “There are sensors on the pedestal. They kick in only if the ring is removed.”

Frowning as her head cleared, Stormy stared at her. “Why do you know that?”

“It's my job to know. Are you all right?”

Nodding, Stormy avoided the other woman's eyes. “Yeah. Fine. I…zoned out for a minute, that's all.”

But it wasn't all. And she wasn't fine. Far from it. She hadn't had an episode like that in sixteen years, but she knew the sensations that had swamped her just now. Knew them well. She would never forget. Never. She hadn't felt that way in sixteen years, not since the last time she'd been with
him. With Dracula. The one and only. And though her memory of the specifics of that time with him was a dark void, her memories of…being possessed remained. And memories of Dracula or not, she'd heard his voice just a moment ago, whispering close to her.

Without the ring and the scroll, I'm afraid there is no hope.

What did it mean? Was he here? Nearby? And why, when she remembered so little about their time together, had that phrase come floating in to her memory now?

No. He wouldn't come back to her when he knew what it did to her mind and body. He'd let her go in order to spare her going through that madness anymore. Or so she liked to believe. She'd awakened in Rhiannon's private jet, on her way back home. And, like all of Vlad's victims before her, her memory of her time with him had been erased.

But not her feelings for him. Inexplicable or not, she had felt a deep sense of loss, and she'd been dying inside a little more with every single day that had passed since.

He wasn't here. He wouldn't put her through that again. Unless…

She looked again at the ring. God, could this be
the ring he'd been talking about? And what had he meant by that cryptic phrase? It was hell not remembering. Sheer hell. She should hate him for playing with her mind the way he had. Over and over she'd struggled and fought to recall the time she'd spent with him, after he'd abducted her in the dead of night so long ago. She'd even tried hypnosis, but it hadn't worked. Nothing had. He'd robbed her of memories she sensed might be some of the best of her life. Damn him for that.

“Ms. Jones? Stormy?”

Turning slowly, she met Melina's far too curious brown eyes. “The ring is the reason you want to hire us?”

“Yes. What's your connection to it?”

Stormy frowned. “I don't know what you mean. I have no connection to it.”

“You certainly had a strong reaction to it.”

She shook her head. “I had a head injury a long time ago. Occasional blackouts are a side effect.”

“Speaking in tongues is a side effect, as well?”

“It's gibberish. It doesn't mean anything. Look, the condition of my skull is really not the issue here. Are you going to tell me what this job entails or not?”

Melina looked at her, pursed her lips and lowered her voice. “I want you to steal it,” she whispered.

 

Stormy wasn't sure what she had said as she had made a hasty exit from the museum. She thought she had told Melina Roscova to do something anatomically impossible, and then she'd left. She hadn't stopped until she'd pulled up in front of the Royal Arms Hotel, where she handed her car keys and a ten-spot to a valet.

“Be careful with her,” she told him. “She's special.”

He promised he would be, and she watched him as he drove her shiny black Nissan, with the customized plates that read Bella-Donna into the parking garage across the street. As he moved into the darkness, she heard tires squeal and winced. “One scratch, pal. You bring Belladonna back with one scratch…”

“Madam?”

She turned to see a doorman with a question in his eyes. “You're going inside?” he asked.

“You tell that moron when he gets back that if he scratched my car, I'll take it out of his hide. And it's
mademoiselle.
Not every thirtysomething female is married, you know.”

“Of course,
mademoiselle.
” He opened the door, his face betraying no hint of emotion. It would have been much more satisfying if he'd been defensive or hostile or even apologetic. But…nothing.

She headed straight for her room and started a bath running, intending to phone Max and fill her in from the tub. She was upset. She was shaken. She was damned scared of what the sight of that ring had done to her.

She'd spoken in Romanian. And she knew exactly what she'd said, even though she didn't speak a word of the language and never had.

The ring belongs to me.

Elisabeta. It had to have been
her
voice.

Sixteen years ago, she'd begun having these symptoms. Blacking out, speaking in a strange language, becoming violent, attacking even her best friends and, usually, remembering nothing. It was as if she were possessed by an alien soul, as if her body were a marionette with some stranger pulling the strings.

Max said her eyes changed color, turned from their normal baby blue to a dark, fathomless ebony, during those episodes.

Through hypnosis, she'd learned the intruder's name. Elisabeta. And she knew, in her gut, that the woman had some connection to Vlad. An intimate one.

Vlad had been under attack, had taken her hostage to aid in his escape. Even then, she'd been
drawn to him. His muscled, powerful body. His long, raven's wing hair. His eyes—the intensity in them when he looked at her. She remembered kissing him as if there were no tomorrow. Or maybe that had never happened; maybe that was fantasy. A delicious erotic fantasy that left her with a deep ache in her loins and her soul. She remembered hoping he could help her solve the mystery of who Elisabeta was and why she was haunting Stormy. Trying to take over. And maybe he had. But though, upon her return, Max had told her that she had been Vlad's captive for than a week, Stormy remembered nothing.

She only knew that since her return, she'd felt almost no sign of that intruding soul's presence. And she'd determined that it was Vlad's nearness that stirred the
other
to life. As it would stir any woman.

She was still there, though. Stormy had never doubted it. Hoped she was wrong, but never truly doubted. Elisabeta, whoever she was, still lurked inside her, waiting…for something.

Stormy stopped pacing and held her head in her hands as she stared into the mirror that was mounted on one of the lush hotel room's antique replica dressers. “Dammit to hell, I hoped you were
gone,” she whispered. “I honest to goodness was beginning to let myself believe you were never coming back. Not a peep out of you in sixteen years. And now you're back? Why? Will I ever be rid of you, Elisabeta?”

A tapping on her door startled her and brought her head around, and she swore under her breath. She had things to work through, and there was a nice hot bath—and maybe a few tiny bottles from the mini-bar—in her immediate future.

“Please, Ms. Jones,” Melina Roscova called from the hallway. “Just give me ten minutes to explain. Ten minutes. It's all I need.”

Stormy sighed, rolled her eyes and stomped into the bathroom to turn off the faucets. She pulled the plug on the steamy water with a sigh of regret, then went to yank the door open. She didn't wait for Melina to come inside, just turned and paced to the small table at the room's far end, yanked out a chair and nodded toward it.

“We are
investigators,
” she told her unwelcome guest, her tone clipped as she bent to the mini-bar and yanked out a can of ginger ale and a tiny bottle of Black Velvet. She popped the tops on both and poured them into a tall glass that sat beside an
empty ice bucket. “Not thieves for hire. We don't break the law, Ms. Roscova. Not for any price.”

“Call me Melina,” the woman said as she sat down. “And all I want you to do is listen to what I have to say. That ring…it has powers.”

“Powers.” Stormy said it deadpan, dryly, without a hint of inflection. Then she took a big slug of the BV-and-ginger.

“Yes. Powers that could, in the wrong hands, upset the supernatural order—perhaps irrevocably.”

“The
super
natural order?”

“Yes. Look, this is very simple. Just…just let me make my pitch, promise me it will remain confidential, and then, if you still refuse, I won't bother you again.”

Stormy downed half the drink and sat down. “And my word that this will remain confidential is going to be enough for you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Melina blinked, and it seemed to Stormy she chose to answer honestly and directly. “Because my organization has been observing yours for years. We know you never break your word. And we know you've kept far bigger secrets than ours.”

Another big sip. The glass was getting low, and she was going to need a refill. Seven Canadian bucks a pop for the BV. And worth it, right about now. “Your…organization?”

“The Sisterhood of Athena has existed for centuries,” Melina said. She spoke slowly, carefully, and seemed to be giving each sentence a great deal of thought before uttering it. “We are a group of women devoted to observing and preserving the supernatural order.” She licked her lips. “Actually, it's the natural order, but our focus is the part of it that most people refer to as supernatural. Things are supposed to be the way they are supposed to be. Humans tend to want to interfere. We don't, unless it's to prevent that interference.”